We have all come to love Dr. Google for better or worse that we constantly Google our health symptoms – both mental and physical, without knowing that this habit is not as healthy as most of us think.
There was this patient who approached a medical practitioner convinced that she had a brain tumor which she said started with fatigue. At first, she thought it was because she had two young children and a full-time job and never got enough sleep or probably, she was staying up late at night to scan through social media.
One night, she felt so drained that she slumped on the couch. She decided to Google her symptoms to see if she could find an at-home remedy. One website leading to another, before she knew it, she was on a website dedicated to brain tumors. She became alert and very anxious as she was convinced that her fatigue was due to a silent mass.
When she scheduled a meeting at the hospital, she wasn’t able to get in for another week. During this time, she couldn’t eat or sleep well all week and felt anxious and distracted. She continued to skim through Google, search for more results on brain tumors, and became convinced that she was beginning to show other symptoms too.
At the appointment, she told the medical practitioner all the symptoms she thought she might have and provided a list of all the expensive tests and scans she wanted to have. Her result showed that she didn’t have a brain tumor. Instead, the patient’s blood work, which most likely would have been ordered if she had given just a simple complaint of the chronic fatigue, showed that she was slightly anemic. She was told to increase her iron intake which she did and soon enough, she began feeling less tired.
Google contains a vast quantity of information but lacks discernment. It’s pretty easy to find lists that sound like the symptoms you have, but you don’t have the medical training to understand the other factors that go into making a medical diagnosis like personal and family history and neither does Dr. Google.
This fast, frequent and usually false diagnosis can lead to more googling and a lot of anxiety. In fact, psychologists have coined a term for it: cyberchondria, or when your anxiety increases due to health-related searches. A lot of doctors take issues with this approach seriously since it makes a patient question expert diagnoses which in turn can negatively affect the doctor-patient relationship. Asides from the possibility of experiencing this increased anxiety, there’s also the issue around the reliability of sites that promise easy and free diagnosis from the comfort of your couch. While some websites are correct, more than 50% of others are greatly lacking credibility.
However, this isn’t to say all googling is bad. There is a survey that has found that people who educated themselves on health topics using the internet were more likely to get better treatment. There are times that using Google as a starting point can help get one to the hospital when one needs it most as one other patient found out. He was seeing his favorite TV show when he got a sharp pain on his side. He thought it was something he ate but the pain didn’t go away, so he decided to google the symptoms. One website mentioned appendicitis as a possible cause of his pain and with few clicks, he was able to get an easy at-home test to perform on himself to confirm this and see if he needs medical care: push down on your lower abdomen and see if it hurts when you let go. His pain shot through the roof when he pulled his hand away. When he got to the hospital, having confirmed this, he was booked for emergency surgery to remove his appendix.
Researches found that doing pre-appointment research positively impacts doctor consultation. The patient could better understand clinical jargon and they could have more productive conversations with their doctors about their health. But this is only applicable in cases where patients intelligently discuss their online findings with their doctors during their appointments and not wanting to belittle their doctor's knowledge.
Ultimately, know that Google may not be the most reliable source to wade through for checking symptoms. If you have something that you’re concerned about enough to Google, it’s probably something your doctor wants to know about too. Don’t delay actual care from medical professionals who have years of intense training for the comfort of Google. Google and digital health care should positively drive people to seek out doctors’ advice.
Have a productive googling, but don’t forget to consult your doctor.
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